INTO THE VOID

I chose to take down this poem about my husband's death... I am proud of it, but decided it's too personal/revealing about loved ones to post in a public forum. Sometimes I go too far for the sake of art... But a few people close to me who knew him/me well were saddened when they came back to read it a second time and found it missing. If you are someone who considers me a friend and you want to read it again (or see it for the first time), feel free to message me. 

CHILDHOOD

This poem was written to fulfill an assignment in a style called "To be read and sung" -- repetition is the key. I know some people are surprised that I would put such personal stuff on my blog, but (A) Hardly anybody reads it/knows about it (truth!) and (B) You can't hurt me with my own story. The questions which are the basis of my "Method Writing" class are "What is the story of my life? What is the truth of who I am?" This is part of the story of my life. It is part of truth of who I am. It does not hold any power over me anymore.

CHILDHOOD

I remember my little feet in the sand

I remember the warming sun on my skin

I remember a gingham tutu’d bathing suit

I remember the curling, churning waves

I remember salt, tart on my tongue

I remember my mother nervous on shore

I remember my father grinning beside me

I remember being pummeled, pulled under

I remember popping up, gasping for breath

I remember saying, “Again! Again!” 

I remember being SO fearless

Why did you choose me?

Why single me out?

Why did you end my childhood?

You were my trusted friend’s father

You were quiet, smiling and kind

You said I was smart and pretty 

You saw that I was vulnerable 

You groomed me ever so slowly 

I learn I am not safe anymore             

I learn my body is not my own

I learn I have no power to stop you

I learn that terror paralyzes 

I learn I can not tell anyone

I learn men have all the control 

I learn alcohol numbs my dread

I trade self respect for drunken touch

I trade my body for beers in bars

I trade my friends for lower companions

I trade my nightmares for blackouts

I trade my bright future for oblivion

But over time I discard my shame

Over time I reclaim my flesh  

Over time I get my self  back

Over time I meet a good man

Over time I learn to feel love

I watch my son move in my belly 

I watch my daughter toddle through snow

I watch them hold hands as they run on the beach

I watch their every gesture and move 

I watch for signs of anything amiss 

I watch, I watch, I watch like a hawk

No one like you will ever approach them

No one like you will endanger them

No one like you will touch their soft skin

No one like you will steal their sweet promise

No one like you will end their childhoods

I remember my little feet in the sand

I remember the warming sun on my skin

I remember being SO fearless 

THE END

“It’s OK,” I told him. “you can go now. I love you.” 

All five kids were now in our big, airy master bedroom with me, on and around the King-sized bed. Amy, my husband Gary’s oldest daughter from his first marriage, had only arrived from upstate New York at midnight. It was now, what, 3 AM? Amy’s preppy, can-do brother Josh had been a champ, schmoozing the airlines so they’d help with flights and not charge us a fortune. Josh knew how to get shit done! His father’s son. Amy and Josh’s middle brother Jax (formerly Katie) had flown in from Minneapolis that morning. Not such a hassle since he worked loading luggage for American Airlines and could fly standby free of charge. He’d shown up unshaven, in rumpled clothes, but sober, and he hadn’t fought with Josh so far, thank God.

Amy had been sprawled on the bed talking to her Dad since she arrived. He was unable to open his eyes or speak anymore, but Amy later told me she knew he’d heard her because he’d been squeezing her hand. The hydraulic bed was propped up to facilitate her Dad’s shallow breathing. The oxygen machine whirred at the bedside. Gary had grown unrecognizable, so thin. He was always freezing now, but could not stand the weight of blankets, so the bedroom fireplace was blasting heat toward his emaciated frame; a linen sheet was pulled up to his chest, a padding of bath towels beneath him. Time had become fluid. In the wee hours, all the lights were still on, and my son Nick, Amy’s half-brother, was across the room on the leather couch under the window, playing his Dad’s favorite music from a laptop, his sister Chloe, just 19, next to him. My sweet red-haired babies. Nick had been in the room for the last 48 hours straight, playing Neil Young, Jackson Browne, The Who, the Beatles, Queen, and all the rest of the artists Gary loved most. 

Music was EVERYTHING to Gary. It had given him a life beyond anything a poor, abused kid from Ft. Wayne, Indiana could ever dare dream of. He’d gone from working in a local record store as a teenager to working WITH all his musical heroes later in life. Some had become close friends. Early this morning one of his rockstar pals BEGGED me to let him come and say goodbye. I’d had to turn him down. I knew Gary would never want to be remembered this way. Yesterday had been the last day visitors were allowed. Today I had phoned a dozen people — some of whom were en route to airports — to tell them not to come, that Gary was unconscious and the end was near. ALL I cared about was keeping him comfortable and getting all 5 kids there. I was too focused on that to worry about how and when my husband would actually die. I’d held onto hope for so long. I had held. I hadn’t broken down. Now the moment had come, the moment he and I had spent almost two years trying to prevent, putting all our energy and resources into keeping him alive.

His once-strong right hand — bony, cold and still, was in my right hand. His wedding ring, now much too large, which had been sitting on the nightstand for months, was in my left hand. He had beautiful, elegant long fingers. He'd been such a big, powerful man. Cancer had devoured him. When the emergency room nurse last weighed him, he’d lost 130 lbs. How could it be that only days ago, we were in the hospital, him sitting up, still sharp, when the doctor answered his question with, “Yes, Gary, you ARE dying. Don’t you want to go home, rather than stay in this hospital?” Gary had immediately said yes, and we’d moved him here. Our room filled up with medical equipment: the breathing apparatus, commode, wheelchair. Hospice nurses around the clock. The bedside table full of morphine vials and high dosage fentanyl patches, which were so potentially lethal the nurses had to wear gloves when applying them. They were needed to keep the excruciating pain at bay. The cancer had moved from his esophagus to his lungs, to his ribs. He was in agony every moment he was conscious those last days. His suffering was unspeakable. Watching him deteriorate was unbearable, so when the soft-spoken Jamaican nurse said it was time to gather, I was relieved. The kids were sobbing, except Chloe, who held everything in. Always. 

“It’s OK,” I told him. “You can go now. I love you.”  I leaned down to kiss my husband’s forehead… and I felt him leave. 

I AM HERE

     So the writing assignment for class today was: Write like you talk. Yeah, OK. Well lately when I talk I use a lot of what my strict Catholic grandma called "foul language." I curse a lot. It may seem lazy and sound angry. I don’t think I’m either of those things, but if looks like I am to other people I don’t fucking care. Grief looks like what it looks like. I’m not lazy, I’m paralyzed. I’m not angry, I’m heartbroken. However I sound or look to other people, I really don’t give a rat's ass. I’m just trying to survive. Actually that’s not true. I am trying to model survival for my son. He’s the one I am concerned about, not me. My daughter is a story for another day. 

     Maybe I should back up. Yeah, I curse a lot. My husband would say to me: “the use of profanity does not enhance your argument.” I’d tell him to fuck off. It was a little schtick we did. Did. Past tense. He’s dead… and I say fuck a lot. I’m not pissed though. I do say Fuck Cancer angrily, but everyone says it that way, don’t they? I have no energy to be angry. I never did. I was too busy trying to keep him alive…  and when all chemo and radiation and surgery and living in a darkened hotel room in Boston, and later running around the country (on what I called our “shopping for hope tour”) didn’t work…  when the cancer came back with a vengeance anyway and we tried a different chemo and then finally immunotherapy… when ALL that was going on, I was never angry. I wasn’t paralyzed then either. I was on a mission. 

     A dear friend helped connect us to the best surgeon in the country for my husband's type of cancer, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, attached to Harvard. I let those hard-ass Boston Irish nurses taunt me while I tried to learn to operate the pump attached to his feeding tube. “Looks like you’re pretty nervous about this, aren’t you? Squeamish, huh?” I knew they wanted to get a rise out of me, but I was not going to let them make me mad or make me cry, though both seemed appealing. I just bit my own tart Irish tongue and told them “show me again. I’ll get it.” And I did get it. I set my alarm to ring every 4 hours around the clock so I could go into the hotel bathroom, measure out the liquid medications, then cut and grind the pills, pulverizing them, dissolving them in water, pouring the solution through a tea strainer provided by room service so no chunks would clog the feeding tube and send us to the ER (as happened on the first day after my husband came “home” to the hotel from the hospital). He wasn’t happy with me that day or a lot of other days during that month. He was often furious during that November spent living in a suite overlooking Boston Common — even a Ritz Carlton can be a prison — and he took it out on his only available target, me. But I understood. He couldn’t eat. He was scared and suffering. He was fighting for his life. He was determined to live. He really thought if he came at cancer with the same focus and drive that had made him such a success in business, he couldn’t possibly die. But he died. He was diagnosed on July 14, 2015… and he died on March 27, 2017. He went through hell. He fought like hell. They took out 1/3 of his stomach and 2/3 of his esophagus, and he was willing to live a horrible, diminished existence just to stay alive. Just to be here with me and the kids. But the cancer ended up in his lungs and his ribs and God knows where else and he lost 130 lbs. and he wasted away and he fucking died. 

     And now I am back living in L.A. trying to keep my kid going. He’s devastated at the loss of his dad, who was also his best friend. I’m not all that happy to be back in L.A.— I was comfortable living at the beach in Encinitas. Life was easy there. But my son is here. And I knew if I stayed where I was, I would stay where I was. I am trying to move forward, but it’s fucking hard. It’s been almost 2 years, but it might as well have been two weeks. I work at cultivating gratitude. I had a great love for nearly 25 years. My husband arranged to have flowers sent to me all during the year after he died. He was THAT guy. But he’s gone and I have to keep going. I have no idea where I fit in the world anymore. I had a huge, exciting life. Now my life is small and quiet. No whining, just adjustment. So I am here. Trying to prop up my son, who struggled to find his way even before his Dad died. Not uncommon for sons of hugely charismatic, successful fathers… especially if the kid is on the quiet side, a musician who lives in his head. So I am here because I adore my son. I get up every morning and try to show him how to face the unknown. Suit up and show up as we say in sobriety. Together we try to find peace, and even happiness, every. fucking. day. And I am here. 

IN MY CUPS

     Back in my 20s I terrorized this town… I used my short skirts, long legs, and quick wit to get me out of all kinds of jams. It worked for a few years. I thought I was having fun, but I would find myself in bad situations, including being shoved in the hatchback of my own sports car and driven at high speed through the streets of Hollywood by my boyfriend-of-the-moment who believed he was in better shape to drive than I was. I would come to in other towns, with people I did not recognize. I would come to on the floor of my bathroom, where I would curl up on the cold tile, waiting for the spinning to stop… or not. I would come to understand that things were not going to get better with age and maturity. I needed to fucking stop the downward spiral… but I couldn’t. I crashed parties, I crashed film premieres, I crashed cars… I crashed into the neighbors’ garbage cans when leaving my cousin’s house in a drunken stupor in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, knocking them into a ravine where they could not be retrieved… not that I was in any shape to even TRY to retrieve them. I could not retrieve myself. After all the many dangerous, humiliating things I had done, it was the fucking garbage cans that did me in. I had had enough. 

     I crashed. I didn’t actually REMEMBER what I had done at my cousin's. I was in a blackout. The acquaintances (I had no real friends left) who had been only too happy to help themselves to the booze in my vacationing cousin’s guest house filled me in on my antics when my head cleared a bit later that evening back at my apartment. I was furious at them for telling me and made them leave.

Crumpled on the floor of my shower, I shivered under a cold drizzle, the hot water having run out as I tried to wash away the shame and self-loathing… again. I had caused much worse incidents than this thing with the garbage cans dozens of times. But somehow on that day I realized that my wild child drunken behavior was going to lead me to a pathetic, ugly end. What kind of end? I didn’t know, but I felt disaster looming at my shoulder like some sort of horrible demon whenever I was sober… which wasn’t nearly often enough. Something had to give. 

This was in the Spring of 1986. I was working for a hotshot agent at William Morris. My boss was, unsurprisingly, annoyed when I would show up at my desk outside his office wearing the same clothes as the day before, make-up smeared, disheveled, reeking. Many a morning he would walk by me, shaking his head as he briskly entered his office and began barking orders for me to start lining up calls to writers, directors, studio heads. As long as I did my job well — and remarkably, I did — he seemed content to stay out of my personal affairs. 

On the morning after the garbage can debacle, when I was looking particularly rough, he glanced at me longer than usual on his way to his desk. I could hear him put down his briefcase and rummage through a drawer. He exited his office without a word. He came back a few minutes later bearing a styrofoam coffee cup. Odd, he NEVER got his own coffee, and he never drank from lowly styrofoam. As he neared my desk, he stopped and turned the cup to face me. On it in blue ballpoint pen he had drawn the face of a woman with a wild mass of curly hair. He had taken a highlighter and tinted her skin yellow, and with a red pen had rendered her eyes bloodshot. Faking hand tremors, intentionally spilling some of the water he’d put in the cup, he extended it to me and said, “why don’t you try to choke down a few sips of water, little missie?” I accepted the cup in horror, as the other assistants looked on. He stalked into his office, calling out, “Get me Julien Temple right now.” I put the cup down and started dialing. Some assistants snickered, but not too loudly. Many of them behaved as badly as I did. 

I didn’t stop drinking that day, and I didn’t stop to wonder WHY I was so self-destructive, so unconcerned with my own future. But I did stop by the mail slot and throw in a letter to my cousin so it would be waiting for her when she returned to town. I told her about the garbage cans. I told her I needed help. I told her I was in trouble. I TOLD. I was a mess. I had been a mess for years. Long before the drinking started. Maybe even before my best friend’s father began touching me in ways he shouldn't when I was still a child. Maybe since birth. My cousin got me help. I finally faced myself and asked WHY. And everything changed. That was April 16, 1986. I am sober to this day.

                                          EPILOGUE

I moved on to another job after I realized that, sober, I had NO desire to train to be an agent. About 18 months after I left William Morris, that hotshot agent stuck his head into the office at the movie studio where I was then working, saying he’d had a meeting down the hall and seen my name of the door, so he had to stop in. He gave me a big grin. He hardly ever smiled at me when I worked for him. No wonder! I invited him in. The actor I read scripts for was out of town shooting a film, so we were able to sit in the inner office and talk. After awkward pleasantries, I told him that I needed to make an amends to him, that I was now over a year sober, and that I was sorry for not being the best employee I could have been. What an understatement! He was so kind I was taken aback. He told me his own family had been affected by alcoholism, and that he was proud of me for turning my life around when I was still so young. My eyes teared up. I told him that I had taken that styrofoam cup home with me the day he gave it to me and put it in my kitchen cupboard so that every time I opened it, I was faced with myself. The cup was still there. I thanked him for giving me that wake-up call. We chatted for a few more minutes and then he left. I have not seen him since. 

Even after our talk, I kept that styrofoam cup. In January of 1994 it was crushed when a massive earthquake hit L.A. and the contents of my kitchen cupboards came crashing to the floor. I wish I’d taken a photo of it before it got destroyed, but it served its purpose. 

Sober, but still sporting those short skirts. Flaunt it while you've got it! Circa 1990/1991... The Propaganda-Satellite Films gang on the way to the VMAs... Top video director Mark Romanek, Production Coordinator - moi, and Executive Producer Larry Perel... long legs, short skirts, BIG hair, good times! 

TRACES

She walks into the the oversized closet and stares at the 2-tiered racks of all-black clothes. Her husband’s signature look — the big man in black. Custom-made unstructured jackets in a thick black non-wrinkle fabric, easily folded into a black rolling Tumi suitcase for endless business trips. Black pleated, cuffed slacks to match. How many of this same outfit hang there? At least a dozen. Black custom-made shirts in a thinner fabric to wear underneath the jackets, too. $700 a pop for those shirts. Ridiculous, she always thought, but he claimed the price was worth it to get something that looked and felt good on his 6’7” 275 lb. frame. And having garments that traveled well was key. “But I wear $5 Wal-Mart t-shirts underneath it all” [and so he did] “so it balances out,” he would joke. She didn’t counter with the exorbitant cost of the silky black boxers that were really underneath it all. He flew around the country and the world incessantly, he worked incredibly hard, and he certainly deserved to be comfortable and to look the part of the successful entertainment executive he had become. Lord knows it was a far cry from the unemployed long-haired cargo shorts and Converse high tops-wearing newly recovering alcoholic and drug addict he’d been when she met him nearly a quarter century earlier. Those years had flown by so quickly, though the last 2 years had had some excruciatingly long days. 

She takes a few steps forward and buries her face in the upper tier of clothes, the shirts and jackets, knowing that there are bound to be one or two pieces that have not been dry cleaned which will still carry the scent of his cologne: Issaye Miyake L’eau D’Issaye Bleu. She is right. She picks up faint traces of the smell of her husband. Her late husband. How long had it been since they had wheeled his body out of the adjoining bedroom and taken him to the mortuary? Thirty hours? What day was today? What time was it? What did it matter? What did anything matter? What was she going to do now? What was she going to do with the rest of her life? She fingers the thick black fabric as her eyes fill up with tears. She does not turn around when she hears a sound behind her. 

“Mom?”

She does not answer, trying to choke back the tears.

“Mom, are you OK? What are you doing?”

She slowly pivots around to face her 23-year-old son, a young man, but also a boy who has just lost his father, his best friend. She smiles, but does not say anything, instead opening her arms to him. He immediately advances and bends his thin 6’4” frame to give her a deep, tight hug. 

“Are you OK?

“Yes, honey. I was just smelling Daddy’s clothes. His cologne reminds me of him.” 

“Oh, me, too. Dad always smelled so nice. Even my friends would tell me that: "Man, your Dad always smells so good.” 

He releases his embrace and steps over to bury his own face in the garments. “My sense of smell isn’t that good. I can’t really pick it up.” 

Because her husband — her late husband — was so fond of his cologne, there were bottles stashed all over the place, including here in the closet. She turns and reaches over to a shelf behind her son and picks up a bottle of L’eau D’Issaye Bleu. She spritzes the rack of jackets and shirts, and without a word, she and her son, this lovely, brokenhearted man-child, bury their faces together into the clothing side by side. He withdraws his face first: “Should we spray ourselves? Is that weird?”

“No,” she assures him, “It’s not weird. It’s sweet.” 

He sprays a heavy mist of the familiar scent over her, then himself, and they wordlessly join hands and walk out of the closet to face the day. 

AT THE BUS STOP

Today's writing class prompt was: "Write about a woman waiting in the rain for a city bus"...

AT THE BUS STOP

The woman stands in a downpour at the southwest corner of Sunset Blvd. and Barrington in the Brentwood section of West Los Angeles, no umbrella to shelter her from the rain.  She looks so tired that’s it’s doubtful she could hold an umbrella above her head even if she owned one, which she doesn’t.  Her thick, shoulder-length,wavy black hair is beginning to mat and stick to the sides of her face.  She does not reach up to brush it back.  She is young, in her early 20s, though her face shows the fatigue of a much older woman.  Her domestic’s uniform -- the black dress and white apron -- is too large, probably passed down from the previous maid in the mansion up Mandeville Canyon where she works.  She either doesn’t know yet, or is too tired to care, that if she took off her apron, people in passing cars might not immediately peg her as a servant, and therefore invisible. 

She considers herself lucky to have a daily ride from the mansion down to this bus stop.  Some of the other women she lives with in the crowded apartment east of downtown Los Angeles have to walk long distances from their places of employment to the nearest bus.  She knows things could be much worse.  She came here from Sinaloa state. 

The Missus of the house does not yell at her the way she knows some of the other girls’ employers yell at them. It would not really matter if the Missus did say rude things to her, as the young woman does not understand more than a handful of words in English.  Most of her interactions are with the Missus’ longtime housekeeper, Maria, who is fluent in English, and behaves very kindly toward this frightened young woman.  The girl had been sent to Maria by Maria’s niece, who works in the home of a famous Hollywood movie producer, yet still lives in the crowded apartment.  

Because the young woman does not have a long downhill walk to to the bus stop, her white shoes, the kind nurses wear, still have a good deal of tread on them.  She won’t have to buy herself new ones anytime soon.  They gave her the dress and apron, but the shoes she had to buy for herself. It took nearly all of the money she had left after making her way across the border and up to meet her cousin in this alien, bustling city.  She doesn’t like to think of that journey.  At all. 

As dusk falls, the young woman turns her face up to the heavy rain and invites it to wash away the day, to transport her back home to her village, a village, where unbeknownst to the young woman, her mother sits on the dirt floor, stirring a pot of beans over an open fire, silently crying for her oldest daughter so far away. 

BLACK WATER

BLACK WATER 

Every Thursday night during high school, a group of my friends and I would gather at the local Shakey’s Pizza on Gloria Drive in south Sacramento, just a few blocks from our campus. We would end up at the pizza joint after we attended the weekly meeting of Young Life, a rowdy song-and-game-filled gathering of suburban kids, hosted by a minister who soft-pedaled basic Christianity, in the living room of a willing parent’s house.  We’d sing folk rock versions of old hymns, as well as new songs from musicals like Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar during the meeting, but once we reached the pizza parlor, the juke box reigned supreme. 

The one song we played first every week was “Black Water” by the Doobie Brothers.  It opened quietly, with a jangling noise that sounded like wind chimes made of shards of broken glass.  As soon as I heard that jangling, my pulse would quicken, anticipating the swampy chords and swirling rhythms to come.  We’d all sing along in low voices on the verses, but when the chorus came up, our group of at least a dozen tuneless teenagers would loudly belt out, “Old black water, keep on rollin’, Mississippi moon won’t you keep on shinin’ on me...”  By the end of the song, which repeats over and over, “I’d like to hear some funky Dixieland, pretty mama come and take me by the hand,” some of the other customers would usually be shouting the words along with us. 

The pizza parlor staff and other Thursday night regulars were used to our invasion of their space and the inevitable sing-along that was guaranteed by our presence.  Looking back on it, I think they probably welcomed the influx of clean-cut, paying high-school-aged customers who were inside, singing and playing Pong and Space Invaders  instead of outside, drinking beer in the parking lot, vandalizing cars and the building, or worse.  We were good kids.  

I’m not sure what it was about that song, “Black Water,” that so appealed to us.  Maybe, for a bunch of white kids raised in suburban Sacramento, the setting of the song on the Mississippi delta seemed exotic and intriguing.  Maybe it was the sawing fiddles, the interplay of instruments or the repetitive groove that mesmerized us.  Whatever it was, it pulled us in and got us singing along, week after week.  

Music really does provide the soundtrack of our lives. Every time I hear “Black Water” now, it takes me back to those innocent times when I flirted (ineptly... over root beers) with cute boys while they ate greasy pepperoni pizza... and occasionally flirted back. 

MY TEMPEST

The prompt for the following short story was "write about your first car."

MY TEMPEST

My father located and purchased my first car in my hometown of Sacramento in 1982.  I was 23 years old, living and working in Los Angeles. He paid $1100 for the car, which I was to repay in monthly $100 installments. He was afraid I might not like the 17-year-old automobile, but he knew that I needed a vehicle no matter what it looked like. 

I had been taking the bus to work from the ritzy Brentwood section of Los Angeles, winding along Sunset Blvd. through Westwood, along the edges of Bel Air and Holmby Hills, through Beverly Hills and past the Sunset Strip clubs, so swanky in the 50s, now frequented by safety-pin-pierced punk rockers... winding further and further east all the way into the heart of Hollywood and my job captioning TV for the deaf at Sunset Gower Studios.  The facility where I worked was a bit rundown at that point, but it had been the venerated Columbia Movie Studios back in its glory days.  

The morning wait and ride to my job were not bad, as the bus picked me up at a corner near my apartment in a prosperous part of town. The only other waiting passengers were tired-eyed Hispanic ladies who must have been heading home from jobs as night nurses and overnight nannies. The evening bus journey was not so safe or smooth... 

I needed a car.

I got a ride from Los Angeles to Sacramento with a friend, anxious to see this vehicle my father had bought - which would free me from the discomfort and danger of sitting after leaving work at a bus stop at the corner of Sunset and Gower... perched uneasily on the bus bench in the dark, alone in a seedy part of Hollywood, being approached and propositioned by strange and sometimes truly frightening men.  I HAD to have a car. 

My father’s fears about my reaction to the car were completely unfounded. I fell in love with it at first sight.  It was a 1965 Pontiac Tempest, a great, solid boat of a car... the front of the vehicle slanted forward, as if it could not wait to speed off.  The body was painted a fantastic aquamarine metallic fleck.  The hard top was bright white.  There was plentiful chrome trim, from the shining perforated hubcaps to the fabulous divided front grill. Heavy chrome bumpers front and back were clearly designed for protection, not just aesthetics.  This car looked retro COOL... and it was built like a tank, which turned out to be a very good thing. 

The interior of the car was also shiny aquamarine, from the paint on the metal dash to the vinyl padding on the doors to the brocade-like textured fabric on the seats.  The aquamarine steering wheel was enormous, and in the center was a clear plastic disc with black backing incised in silver with the Pontiac logo, an elongated indented arrowhead design... There were round Jetsons-like chrome bullet vents jutting from the dash. Everything glistened and gleamed... it was all in pristine condition.  The Tempest had only been driven to the grocery store and church by the original owner, a woman who was already elderly when she purchased it.  She must have felt safe, and maybe a little sassy in this huge, snazzy vehicle.  I hope so.  By the time the car came to me, she had passed away.  Her son sold it to my father as he was disposing of her effects. 

When I drove the Tempest around Los Angeles, other cars would often slow down, some would even honk.  Almost every time I pulled into a gas station the mechanics would come out to look at it.  They marveled at the spotless engine and the vehicle's incredible condition. They frequently offered to buy the car then and there.  Many people offered to buy my Tempest, but I always declined.  Thank God. 

Because one night when my 16-year-old sister Annie and her best friend Tena were down in L.A. to visit me and tour the UCLA campus, I agreed to take the two girls for a drive through Beverly Hills to look at movie star houses.  My friend and co-worker, Tim, came along.  He sat up front with me.  Annie sat behind me, with Tena behind Tim.  

The last thing I remember is sitting at the stop sign at the northwest corner of Sunset and Bedford, waiting to cross the busy road.  The next thing I remember is coming to in the Emergency Room at UCLA.  The Tempest, we later learned, had been broad-sided by two men joyriding without permission in their uncle’s Porsche.  Police accident scene investigators determined that they had been going 70 miles an hour and never hit their brakes.  They may not have had their headlights on.

Unlike my little sister Annie (the only one to miraculously escape injury in the crash) I do not remember the horrific sounds of the collision, I do not remember the blood, the wails of pain and terror, the sirens, the crowds of people who spilled out of the nearby mansions and cars along Sunset Blvd.  I do not recall how the police closed down Sunset Blvd. in both directions, because the Porsche had spun my huge solid metal tank of a car and thrown it across the grass median, where it landed on Sunset, facing the opposite direction, my drive shaft flung half a block down. I remember none of this.  I know these things happened only because of what I was later told by my passengers, what I read in police reports, private investigators’ findings, photographs.  

That Pontiac Tempest saved all of our lives, though my passengers and I were not unscathed.  Tena, my sister’s exquisitely beautiful best friend, had her jaw shattered and lost many teeth.  Now seems as good a time as any to mention that not only was Tena a girl I knew well and loved, having babysat her for many years when she was little, before I went away to college, but she was also my orthodontist’s daughter. Her father had straightened my teeth, and now his daughter was on a gurney in an emergency room far from home, bandaged so only her eyes showed, bruised and bloodied, in pain and afraid.  It was unspeakably awful.  

My friend Tim was one curtained bed over from Tena, and I was on his other side.  The doctors had shaved a sizable patch of Tim’s hair away in order to stitch up a large gash in his scalp. I had suffered an injury to my lower back and I had a concussion.  This physical trauma -- along with the horror of the accident scene -- had contributed to temporary hysterical amnesia.  I could not tell the doctors my name or where I was.  I knew I SHOULD know these things, and the panic at not being able to answer such simple questions just made things worse.  

I was agitated and terrified that my memory would not return.  I just kept repeating, “I’m disoriented, I’m disoriented.”  Apparently I had been doing this from the time of the accident on, trying everyone’s patience and adding to the tension of the scene.  The nurses were attempting to calm me, but it was only when Tim started to joke about his new shaved hairstyle in order to make me laugh that I began to settle down and to regain my wits to some degree so that little by little I could answer questions about who I was, where I lived, what day it was... but I could not tell the nurses or doctors what had transpired over the previous couple of hours. That never changed. The memory of the accident has never come back to me, and for that I am deeply grateful. 

The morning after the accident I was taken to a cousin’s house over Coldwater Canyon in Studio City... I needed to be observed to make sure that I didn’t fall asleep until the doctors could be certain that my concussion had improved.  I also could not keep my balance too well.  My lower back and my equilibrium were both faulty at that point.  After a couple of days, my cousin Shawn drove me to the wrecking yard to identify the remains of my beloved Tempest.  When I saw the twisted, mangled mass of steel that had been my car, I could not believe all four of us had survived. The enormity of what had transpired finally sank in. I sobbed for several minutes while Shawn rubbed my back. 

I took Polaroids for the attorneys of what was left of my poor old Tempest, and almost as an afterthought, I pried that plastic disc with the Pontiac logo off the middle of the enormous aqua blue steering wheel.  I still have it in my jewelry box, amidst my other valuables.  

SURF BREAK

SURF BREAK

I was awakened today well before the sun rose by the sound of laughter and voices coming from a spot not far away from my open bedroom window.  I wasn’t startled because this is not uncommon. I live on a bluff above a major surf break and there’s many a morning when intrepid wave riders -- carrying surfboards and wearing headlamps to light the way -- pick their way along the dark cliffside to the hidden path which will take them down to the beach.  It doesn’t annoy me to be roused from my sleep on these occasions.  It’s a privilege to live so close to the ocean which belongs to us all.  Once the sun comes up, I love watching these men and women catching wave after wave below my expansive living room windows.

I am not a surfer myself.  I would love to be, but I think it’s too late for me.  A left ankle badly broken at age 25 has left me with such severe arthritis in that joint at age 54 that the prospect of being able to quickly “pop up” into a standing position on a surfboard does not seem like a likely scenario for me.  I will stick to body surfing and boogie boarding -- and then only in the warmer summer months.  It’s January now and there are still dozens of surfers in the rather frigid Pacific winter waters below my windows on a daily basis. 

I try not to take where I live for granted.  Unfortunately, my children do.  It’s just what they are used to so I guess I can’t really fault them. They started coming here for vacations when they were very young and have lived permanently here at the beach since they were 9 and 5 years old.  Before that they grew up in the icy, sub-zero winters and humid, tornado-spawning summers of Minnesota.  I would have thought that they would want to spend every possible moment at the beach, as I had during my childhood vacations. I grew up in landlocked Sacramento and absolutely lived for the week or two when my family would take our summer vacation at the beach in Santa Cruz, California.  For my 5 siblings, my parents and me, the beach was pure heaven.  I spent every possible hour riding the waves with nothing but my little body.  No inner tubes, no boogies boards, nothing... just me and the waves.  My dad taught me to do this before I was even in kindergarten. Looking back on it as a parent now, I can understand why I made my mother so nervous.  I was just this little bit of a thing, being tossed around and ground into the sand by big waves... and I loved it. I was fearless.  It was good life training. 

My kids don’t dislike the beach, and they actually know how to surf.  Both my son and daughter took Surf P.E. at school and learned to ride the waves, but neither has a passion for it, which makes me a bit sad.  Their surfboards and wet suits lie unused in the garage.  I am thinking of donating them back to the school so kids with less advantages and more passion for the ocean might have the chance to learn to surf. You can’t force your kids to have the childhood you wish you could have had, nor should you... I learned that long ago. 

Not only are there surfers in our local waters, but we regularly see dolphins, and at this time of year, whales.  We spot them spouting as they surface on their way south to the warm Mexican waters of Baja California, where they will have babies... and then make their way later this Spring back to the frigid waters of Alaska.  And thus is has been for thousands of years.  Nature is an awe-inspiring thing.  

There’s still a bit of fog hanging in the air.  I can see it and feel it even though the sun is not yet up.  It’s a funny thing how, even over the roar of the waves, I can hear the laughter of the surfers down on the beach below the cliff.  I can’t see them, but I imagine  they are waxing up their boards and waiting for first light, which should be about to break any minute.  Soon I will be able to see them paddling out, catching wave after wave in the crisp morning air.  It’s going to be a good day, I can just tell. 

The Royal "WE" - hahahahaha!

 

Boothby Coat of Arms from Debret's Peerage 

I have been missing in action from this blog because I have fallen down the Ancestry.com rabbit hole... I have been researching my family's roots, with an eye toward writing a substantial piece based around an idea I have... but of course, I have to complicate everything and come up with some big sprawling epic story so it may never come to fruition.  Still, it's fascinating to find out that my father was NOT telling one of his tall tales when he claimed that his side of the family descended from many kings and princes, going back to Charlemagne and beyond!  Yes, people, my blood is a very, very, very diluted shade of palest blue! Time to kiss my ring! HA!

 I find this somehow very amusing, as I have always claimed that I come from "sturdy peasant stock" - which for the most part, I am sure that I do.   Still, since one of my ancestors was Lord Chief Justice of all of England in the middle ages, and another was King of Leinster in Ireland, I have become obsessed with reading up on medieval England and Ireland... so that makes it hard to find time to post regularly on THIS blog. But maybe that's all for the best.  The whole point of setting this page up was to get me back to writing regularly... but every good writer has to do enormous amounts of reading - and that's what I have been doing. Maybe I will write some great historical novel.  At least doing all of this research will keep me some of my gray matter from completely atrophying.  And I have to say, it's really fun to find out where your family comes from!

It's amazing to live in the age of the internet - and Amazon.com Prime - so that much of the information I need is never more than a keystroke or a 2-day UPS delivery period away.  Still, I think I may just have to find a way to get myself over to the lands of my ancestors and do some digging around in older "source materials"... who knows what I may find? For now, I will have to content myself with my background reading, and there aren't enough hours in the day to read everything I have already dug up.  So back down the rabbit hole "we" go!

Ancient la Zouche coat of Arms - my ancestor Lucie de la Zouche had the bluest of blue blood...

Ashby la Zouche castle ruins

The coat of arms of the ancient de Greene family - from which I directly decend: 

It's too beautiful...

IT'S TOO BEAUTIFUL TO SIT INDOORS WRITING

...so I have brought my laptop outside where I can feel the breeze, see the sunlight glinting off the ever-changing ocean, and hear the waves crashing.  The tide is in so there are no surfers in the water, but they will be back later this afternoon when conditions improve.  I have been reading voraciously and mulling over ideas I have for a long piece I would like to write... consequently, this little old blog has not been a priority, but since the weather gods are smiling, I think if I plop myself at this table under an umbrella, maybe I will have something worth posting.

... and just now my daughter has come out onto the deck to ask if I will come inside on this gorgeous day to watch a television show with her.  I sigh loudly inside, but I know better than to do so audibly.  Chloe is 14... and it's still something of a miracle that she asks me to join her in any kind of activity - so even tho' she is asking me to stop writing to go indoors into a darkened, air conditioned room on a spectacular sunny day, I am going to fold up this laptop and go.  I know my chances at closeness with my daughter are limited.  I won't squander a moment of these dwindling days of her need for me.  So ciao for now, my writing muse.  I trust you will return tomorrow... or at least the next time the fog rolls in.

SAME SCENE, DIFFERENT ANGLE

More old stuff... written on location in Spain while I was there working on a film many years ago.  Back in the late 80s/early 90s, my beloved friend Carrie White -- celebrity hairdresser and now bestselling author (Upper Cut, the L.A. Times besteller!) -- used to host regular poetry readings at that dearly-departed, ultra cool hangout in West L.A., Lulu's Alibi.  I had the confidence of youth and thought I had something to say, so I often read my little bits o' verse at her poetry happenings.  Carrie always had themes for each week, and while I can't remember what the theme actually was for the week I read these two pieces, it could have easily been SAME SCENE, DIFFERENT ANGLE:

MELTDOWN
He treated her
as the womanchild she was
plying her with sweets
and grown-up conversation.
She was enchanted,
though aware it was fantasy,
adult eyes seeing clearly
that he would always return
home to another
despite his gypsy soul,
or perhaps because of it.
Still, tears streak her face,
make-up rivulets dribbling
like the illicit ice creams
down the side of her life.
The frustrations of a child,
the appetites of a woman...
She'd learned in kindergarten:
don't take what isn't yours.
 
      -- written in 1989


A GIRL LIKE YOU
A girl like you
should have a guitar
so men could serenade you
up close, not from afar

A girl like you
should have her own fleet
to conquer the world
and lay it at her feet

A guy like you
should go home to his wife
stop writing cliched poems
and face up to his life

A guy like you
should quit wasting time
on a girl like me
who knows all your lines
       
    -- written in 1989

Beanie Baby departs

                                                        Where's Waldo?  Where's that beanie headed?        


                                                                             MY BEANIE BABY DEPARTS

Tomorrow, my firstborn, my son Nick, will move out of his cluttered, pungent-smelling teenage boy bedroom and into his Freshman dorm room at USC.  I am trying to remain calm by keeping busy and not really letting the facts of this inevitable situation sink in yet.

I think pretty much every mother facing the departure of her first (and more frequently, it seems, ONLY) child goes through some pattern of emotional turmoil: recollecting the miraculous sensation of your child moving inside your belly, remembering the day the kid was born “like it was yesterday,” rifling through photos of his childhood -- either literally or mentally -- lamenting to anyone who will listen about how quickly the years have flown by... It’s helpful to commiserate with other parents facing the same scenario because nobody else really wants to hear your whining about how much you are going to miss your kid.

But, oh, how I am going to miss my kid, my Nick, my Beanie Baby. Anyone who knows Nick well will understand the “Beanie Baby” reference.  Up until very recently, Nick wore a red and black checked beanie everywhere, every day, all the time.  The SAME beanie... every day for over five years.  (See previous post “My Beanie Baby” for further background, if you care to... )  So even though the beanie is no longer ever-present, Nick will always be My Beanie Baby in my heart.

When you send a child off to college, you hope to hell that you have done your best to prepare him for the bigger world out there.  And you know you have not done enough.  At least I know I haven’t.  I have over-protected Nick and his sister Chloe. I have certainly over-indulged them (with a lot of help from my accomplice:  their dad, my husband Gary).  I have tried to give them the life I wish I could have had as a kid.  Some of it has been for the best, some of it has probably served to keep my kids unprepared for “the real world.”  But all that I did was done with an excess of love.  I gave up an exciting career and innumerable dear friends in Los Angeles to move to Minnesota for Gary’s new job when Nick was an infant, all in an effort to give my boy the best life possible... I have poured my heart into both of my kids and have probably put too much of my energy into them - to the point that I am not sure who I am without them... so subtracting Nick from the equation is going to throw my life off balance for a time, no question about it. 

It’s a parent’s job to raise kids and send them out into the world - but somehow when that time comes it’s still a shock.  I hope I have helped my son establish enough of a sense of himself for him to forge his own path... without screwing things up before he even gets out of college.  I barely held it together when I left my parents' nest and went off to UC Berkeley, too naive and unworldly to feel secure.  I immediately fell into a pattern of heavy drinking to mask my self-consciousness.  Nick is very much like me - so of course I worry.  I guess only time will tell... but it’s now up to Nick to succeed or fail on his own.  No Mom and Dad there to smooth his way or help him out of jams. I truly WANT him to move on to college and have an unforgettable, amazing time.  The hour has come for me to let him go - but he’ll be forever tethered to my soul.  I am not sure how ready I am for this transition, but I will do my best not to mortify him by falling apart when I finally walk out of his dorm room tomorrow.  I’ll report back on how that goes... 

My Beanie Baby

My Beanie Baby

It was bound to happen... somehow I thought it might be some drunken frat rat at USC who took my kid’s beanie after he started college this fall.  As it turns out, it was probably a fellow concert-goer at a Waaves show that took place at the Del Mar Fairgrounds right after the horse races a few weeks ago.  What’s the big deal about a hat?  Plenty... 

My “kid” Nick is 18 years old, 6’4” tall, toothpick thin, with a fantastic mane of tangled red-brown hair that flows down to his waist.  When he was in 7th grade, he took to wearing a little pork pie fedora.  At that point, Nick’s hair was not yet touching his shoulders.  He started to be harassed on the bus riding to and from middle school -- for daring to express his individuality, wearing a hat and growing his hair (“You look like a girl!  Are you a girl?” and other such BS that adolescent boys sometimes say to anyone who dares to be at all different).  Nick didn’t like being picked on, but he was determined not to give in to peer pressure.  He had fallen in love with rock music and wanted to look the part of the musician he aspired to be.  He had begun to take drum lessons in elementary school and it awakened a sense of purpose in him.  He kept going to his drum lessons and tried to ignore the bullies on the bus.  Then some kid whose name he didn’t even know slammed his head into a table at school and everything started to go south.  Nick kept the hat on, but he hid in his room, feigned illness, balked at riding the bus, said he hated school.  He was in a bad place. This is the age when parents know their kid's future is at stake.  If they check out emotionally, you may never get them back on the path to health and happiness.

My husband and I knew something had to give.  We had to find a safe haven for this kid.  We found an amazing little independent boho school (and I do mean little: 135 kids TOTAL enrollment, grades 6-12) which was willing to take him with only 7 weeks left in the school year.  I told the headmaster that I needed Nick to be somewhere that he could feel safe being himself, and I thought that if this school stuck to their dress code and told Nick he could not wear his hat, that might be a deal breaker.  This kind man made an exception for my struggling son - the hat stayed... and so did Nick.

Over the summer before 8th grade started, Nick came upon a red and black buffalo plaid Billabong knit beanie at a surf shop near our home.  He decided this would be the basis of his new image.  He donned that beanie and never looked back.  It became his signature, his trademark.  He never took it off.  When I realized I would from time to time have to wash it while he slept, I decided to see if I could buy some back-up beanies, just in case - God forbid - something happened to Nick’s favored hat.  The surf shop had only one more of that same beanie left, so I bought that, then went online.  I had some vague inkling that this beanie was so central to Nick’s self-image that having extras might come in handy some day... I supposed that maybe I would stage a photo with a bunch of his friends all wearing the cap, something like that.  I just thought it would be a good idea to get more.  So I bought 10.  We now had a round dozen... that should be enough!

But as time went on, it became clear that none of the “back-up beanies” would ever be worn.  Nick attached some sort of magical powers to that original beanie.  It had been with him to some of the most important events in his life:  The Led Zeppelin reunion at the O2 in London, our 2-week family trip to Italy, 3 years at Grammy Camp, and covering the red carpet as the official Grammy teen reporter at the 2010 Grammy Awards... (backstage in the pressroom, Grammy host Stephen Colbert called on Nick with: "You, in the hat"!)  He was invited to be motion captured for one of the Guitar Hero games - and there’s his avatar, sporting the beanie. Nick drummed onstage at the El Rey theater in L.A. during a Grammy Camp showcase, and met countless famous musicians he admired, all while wearing his beanie. (Lucky kid had a dad in the business and got to see lots of shows from side stage). Nick became recognized by many of the rockstars he idolized as “the kid in the beanie” even if they didn’t know his name. 

As the years went on, Nick seemed to think that the hat carried some kind of karma... it was the keeper of his most treasured memories.  The more frayed and faded and snagged the cap got, the more Nick loved it.  This beanie had lived life with him. It was his lucky charm and his signature piece. It was both baby blankie and talisman. He could not leave the house unless that damn hat was on his head, and many mornings were spent with me yelling that it was time to leave for carpool while he raced around tearing apart his bedroom, looking for the beanie.  Once he had it on, all was right in the world.

And now the beanie is gone... whether it was actually snatched off Nick’s head or accidentally brushed off by another moshing teen, it doesn’t really matter.  Nick and his buddies looked on the ground and on other heads for it, but it was nowhere to be found.   They filed a late-night report at the fairgrounds Lost and Found, describing the beanie in detail -- sweetly naive to think someone would turn in a stretched out, discolored, unraveling hat. There are plenty of fans of his bands here in San Diego who might have wanted a keepsake of the wild-haired drummer -- maybe one of them was at that Waaves concert and took it for themselves.  Who knows? My belief is that the beanie either made its way into some knowing kid’s pocket or into the garbage after being found on the ground by the clean-up crew. 

Nick’s been mourning the loss of his “old friend” a bit, but he’s also been surprisingly OK... donning a new, never-worn duplicate beanie that was stored away in a drawer, as well as other hats here and there, but he’s also been going out bare-headed, with no cranial “armor” to speak of.  He’s becoming more and more OK with the idea of simply being NICK, not just the kid in the beanie.  Just in time for college... I guess it was time for a change. 

My Robert Plant Moment

(Author's disclaimer: Yes, I know there are problems with verb tenses switching in this essay - I will fix that... eventually... or not!!!)

MY ROBERT PLANT MOMENT

Many months after we attended the 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion concert in London, my husband Gary and I were lucky enough to be T Bone Burnett’s guests at the Robert Plant / Alison Krauss “Raising Sand” concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.  Gary and T Bone had been meeting over business prospects during the previous months and  had become friendly - so we were welcomed onto his tour bus/dressing room prior to the show.

T Bone has a well-deserved reputation and one of the best producers in the music business, but he’s also a fantastic guitarist and was playing in the band for the tour.  He looks like a southern gentlemen from some bygone era, a riverboat gambler... Tall and fair, with a southern drawl and a laconic way of speaking, he has this wonderful out-of-the-past presence about him.  His knowledge of arcane music history is mind-boggling.  We were having a great conversation with him when there came a knock on his tour bus door, and who should pop in with a “Hello, Henry!” -- but Robert Plant. (T Bone’s birth name is Joseph Henry Burnett).

Having spent decades working (and playing!) around the film and music businesses, I am not easily impressed by celebrity. I rarely get nervous. I don't confuse talent with character, and I have many famous friends and acquaintances:  Emmy, Oscar and Grammy winners, and a good smattering of Rock & Roll Hall of Famers among them. But c’mon, this is Robert Plant!  For most women of a certain age, there is no way to avoid experiencing heart palpitations when he enters the room - or in this case, the very close confines of an over-air-conditioned tour bus. 

The golden god himself comes in and seats himself on the forward bench across from my husband, just diagonal from where I am perched.  He is wearing cowboy boots... that much I remember.  The rest is something of a blur.  He is charming and funny.  My husband Gary reminds him that they have met before when Gary arranged for his company to sponsor the Page/Plant Unledded and No Quarter tours.  Plant graciously says of course he remembers Gary.  If he doesn’t, he’s covering well.  I have had my photo taken with him and Jimmy at cattle calls backstage before various shows, but there is no reason he should recognize me, nor does he appear to.  I am just one more aging blonde in a never-ending sea of aging blonde fans.  

There’s a great deal of gray mixed in with his own blonde hair now, and there are sizable bags under those blue-green eyes... eyes that so many girls teenage girls dreamed of gazing into (OK, I'll admit it, myself included). Plant does not appear to be one of those skin-cream-slathering metrosexual rockers who fight the aging process. He’s grizzled, he’s weathered, his face and body are lived-in.  What could be more sexy? There are still strong traces of his black country roots in his reedy voice. There's no arrogance about him on this bus. He's a man who is comfortable with who and where he is. 

Uncharacteristically for me, I sit quietly. I'm not really nervous, but I don't want to just blither either.  I mostly listen to the chit chat between T Bone, Plant, and T Bone’s lovely lady-friend (now wife), the Oscar-winning writer (Thelma and Louise!) and director, Callie Khouri, who frequently comes and goes from the bus, as she is apparently tending to other guests backstage.  (How did we get so lucky as to be the ones on the bus?!!) Gary and T Bone and Robert Plant start discussing sleep problems they are all experiencing as they age.  They decide they should all go to a sleep clinic one of them knows about.  (For years to come, Gary will jokingly tell people, “Robert Plant asked me to sleep with him!”).  They are talking like a bunch of old guys and I can hardly stand it.  I want to shout, “NO! Stop this geriatric talk... you are Robert Plant!" 

I want to jump into the conversation, not to actually say that, but because there is something else I feel compelled to tell Plant. When there is a lull, I take my chance and say, “I just wanted to tell you that we were at the reunion show at the O2 and it was one of the greatest nights of my life.”  Plant lets out an exasperated sigh.  No, “Oh, thank you, yes, that was an extraordinary evening, wasn’t it?”  Instead he grumbles something about being unhappy about having done the show. I plow on, “Well I thought it was fantastic. We got to take our 13-year-old son with us and none of us will ever forget it.”  Gary chimes in with more positive feedback on just how amazing the concert was for everyone there.  But Plant is not swayed from his negative tone: “Well, it brought out all of the carnival barkers, didn’t it?  Now everyone is insisting we tour.”  Ah, so that’s what it’s about.  Other band members and all of those who serve to benefit from the HUGE income such a tour would bring have not stopped pressuring Plant, the hold-out, about cashing in.  He goes on to tell us something to the effect of (it’s been awhile since this conversation took place, so I can’t be sure this is what was said verbatim!): “I am not 23 anymore!  I can’t do that every night.”  He tells us that a special bass had to be made for John Paul Jones so Plant could sing in a lower key.  But I sense that it’s not just that it’s hard for Plant to hit all the notes anymore. My impression is that he doesn’t want to be bored doing the same thing and he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself or Zeppelin. Plant wants to leave the band’s legacy intact. 

He grouses a bit more, then says, “well, but there was one thing...”  And he proceeds to tell me a story I will not soon forget.  (I check the details out later with former Zeppelin tour manager, Richard Cole, who happens to be one of my closest friends.  Yes, that Richard Cole, the notorious instigator of many of Zeppelin’s most outrageous antics back in the day. He’s a pussycat now, clean and sober many years, and I proclaim my affection for him proudly.)  

The story Plant tells me - paraphrased from memory, of course - is this: “One of my best mates was really ill...”  Plant’s friend was dying.  When Jimmy Page broke a finger and the concert date had to be moved back by several weeks, this great pal of Plant’s managed to hang on.  Plant recounts what happened: for the day of the show, December 10, 2007, he arranged for a couple of male nurses to watch over this friend.  (Richard Cole later tells me that, in fact, it’s his understanding that the man was so ill Plant had to have him flown in by Medivac helicopter ambulance).  They set this pal of Plant’s up next to the sound board.  After the show, the nurses both handed Robert Plant back their paychecks.  The conversation, as best I can recall Plant relating it, went like this: “We can’t take this money from you.” And Plant says, “oh, you enjoyed the show that much?”  And the nurses say, “Well yes, the show was great, but more than that, watching your friend watch you up there on stage was a priceless experience for us.  To see the joy he felt watching you up there was something we will never forget.  We can’t take your money." 

So here I am, a middle-aged fan of this aging rock god, sitting on a tour bus, frozen, rapt, while Robert Plant recounts this truly extraordinary tale - and of course my eyes are welling up already - and then Plant says, “and he died just a short time later.”  

I have tears brimming in my eyes - and this is when I have “my Robert Plant moment” ... I lean forward toward him and say, “look, I don’t know you... so I hope it’s not too presumptuous of me to say this:  Maybe THAT is why you did the concert. For your friend.”  Plant locks eyes with me, and seems to consider this concept for a brief instant. He gives me slight smile and a nod of his head... and then the moment is over.  He soon leaves the bus, and Gary and I follow shortly thereafter.  

The Raising Sand concert was wonderful, truly memorable, filled with a lightness and subtlety not often associated with the Plant of Zeppelin days.  But the music is not what I recall when I think back on that night. 

Robert Plant may not remember a single bit of this non-event in his life, this little conversation -- with people whose names he may never remember -- on his friend “Henry’s” tour bus, but of course I will never forget it.  The love and devotion he showed to a desperately ill friend humanized him and forever endeared him to me. 

In the midst of the enormous pressure that came with mounting a massively hyped reunion concert the whole world was bound to be fixated on, he took the time and effort to do an incredible thing to bring joy to the last days of a dying man’s life... THAT's a rockstar move.